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10
World Watch
|
November/December 2009 www.worldwatch.org
Livestock and Climate Change
What if the key actors in climate change are…
cows, pigs, and chickens?
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by Robert Goodland and JeffAnhang
Whenever the causes of climate change are discussed, fossilfuelstopthelist.Oil,naturalgas,andespeciallycoalareindeedmajor sources of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide(CO
2
)andothergreenhousegases(GHGs).Butwebelievethatthelifecycleandsupplychainof domesticatedanimalsraisedforfoodhavebeenvastlyunderestimatedasasourceof GHGs,and in fact account for at least half of all human-causedGHGs.If this argument is right,it implies that replacinglive-stockproductswithbetteralternativeswouldbethebeststrat-egy forreversingclimatechange.Infact,thisapproachwouldhave far more rapid effects on GHG emissions and theiratmospheric concentrations—and thus on the rate the cli-mate is warming—than actions to replace fossil fuels withrenewable energy.Livestock are already well-known to contribute to GHGemissions.
Livestock’s Long Shadow,
the widely-cited 2006report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organi-zation (FAO), estimates that 7,516 million metric tons per year of CO
2
equivalents (CO
2
e), or 18 percent of annualworldwide GHG emissions,are attributable to cattle,buffalo,sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs, and poultry. That amountwould easily qualify livestock for a hard look indeed in thesearch for ways to address climate change. But our analysisshows that livestock and their byproducts actually accountfor
at least 
32,564milliontonsof CO
2
eperyear,or51percentof annual worldwide GHG emissions.This is a strong claim that requires strong evidence, sowe will thoroughly review the direct and indirect sources of GHG emissions from livestock. Some of these are obviousbut underestimated, some are simply overlooked, and someare emissions sources that are already counted but have been assigned to thewrong sectors.Data on livestock vary fromplace to place and are affected by unavoid-ableimprecision;whereitwasimpossibletoavoidimprecision inestimatinganysumof GHGs, we strove to minimize the sum soour overall estimate could be understoodas conservative.
The Big Picture
The table to the right summarizes the cat-egories of livestock-based emissions andourestimatesof theirsize.WebeginwiththeFAO’s 7,516 million tons of CO
2
e per yearattributable to livestock, an amount estab-lished by adding up GHG emissionsinvolved in clearing land to graze livestockand grow feed, keeping livestock alive, andprocessing and transporting the end prod-ucts. We show that 25,048 million tons of CO
2
e attributable to livestock have beenundercounted or overlooked; of that subtotal, 3,000 milliontons are misallocated and 22,048 million tons are entirely uncounted. When uncounted tons are added to the globalinventory of atmospheric GHGs, that inventory rises from41,755 million tons to 63,803 million tons. FAO’s 7,516 mil-lion tons of CO
2
e attributable to livestock then decline from18 percent of worldwide GHGs to 11.8 percent. Let’s look ateach category of uncounted or misallocated GHGs:
Breathing.
The FAO excludes livestock respiration fromits estimate, per the following argument:Respiration by livestock is not a net source of CO
2
….Emissionsfromlivestockrespirationarepartof arap-idly cycling biological system, where the plant matterconsumedwasitself createdthroughtheconversionof atmospheric CO
2
into organic compounds. Since theemitted and absorbed quantities are considered to beequivalent,livestockrespirationisnotconsideredtobea net source under the Kyoto Protocol. Indeed, sincepart of the carbon consumed is stored in the live tis-sueof thegrowinganimal,agrowingglobalherdcouldeven be considered a carbon sink. The standing stocklivestock biomass increased significantly over the lastdecades…. This continuing growth…could be con-sideredasacarbonsequestrationprocess(roughlyesti-mated at 1 or 2 million tons carbon per year).But this is a flawed way to look at the matter. Examiningthe sequestration claim first:Sequestration properly refers toextractionof CO
2
fromtheatmosphereanditsburialinavaultor a stable compound from which it cannot escape over along period of time.Even if one considers the standing massof livestock as a carbon sink, by the FAO’s own estimate theamountof carbonstoredinlivestockistrivialcomparedtothe
www.worldwatch.org November/December 2009
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World Watch
11
 Annual GHG Percentage of emissions (CO
2
e) worldwide total
million tons
FAO estimate
7,516 11.8
Uncounted in current GHG inventories:
1. Overlooked respiration by livestock 8,769 13.72. Overlooked land use
≥
2,672
≥
4.23. Undercounted methane 5,047 7.94. Other four categories (see text)
≥
5,560
≥
8.7Subtotal
≥
22,048
≥
34.5
Misallocated in current GHG inventories:
5. Three categories (see text)
≥
3,000
≥
4.7
Total GHGs attributable tolivestock products
≥
32,564
≥
51.0
Uncounted, Overlooked, and MisallocatedLivestock-related GHG Emissions
 
12
World Watch
|
November/December 2009 www.worldwatch.org
amountstoredinforestclearedtocreatespaceforgrowingfeedand grazing livestock.More to the point, livestock (like automobiles) are ahuman invention and convenience, not part of pre-humantimes, and a molecule of CO
2
exhaled by livestock is nomore natural than one from an auto tailpipe. Moreover,while over time an equilibrium of CO
2
may exist between theamount respired by animals and the amount photosynthe-sized by plants,that equilibrium has never been static.Today,tens of billions more livestock are exhaling CO
2
than in pre-industrial days, while Earth’s photosynthetic capacity (itscapacity to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by absorbingit in plant mass) has declined sharply as forest has beencleared. (Meanwhile, of course, we add more carbon to theair by burning fossil fuels,further overwhelming the carbon-absorption system.)TheFAOassertsthatlivestockrespirationisnotlistedasarecognizedsourceof GHGsundertheKyotoProtocol,althoughinfacttheProtocoldoeslistCO
2
withnoexception,and“other”isincludedasacatchallcategory.Forclarity,itshouldbelistedseparately in whatever protocol replaces Kyoto.It is tempting to exclude one or another anthropogenicsource of emissions from carbon accounting—according toone’s own interests—on the grounds that it is offset by pho-tosynthesis. But if it is legitimate to count as GHG sourcesfossil-fuel-drivenautomobiles,whichhundredsof millionsof peopledonotdrive,thenitisequallylegitimatetocountlive-stockrespiration.Littleornolivestockproductisconsumedby hundredsof millionsof humans,andnolivestockrespiration(unlike human respiration) is needed for human survival.By keeping GHGs attributable to livestock respiration off GHGbalance sheets,it is predictable that they will not be managedand their amount will increase—as in fact is happening.Carbondioxidefromlivestockrespirationaccountsfor21percent of anthropogenic GHGs worldwide, according to a2005 estimate by British physicist Alan Calverd. He did notprovide the weight of this CO
2
, but it works out to about8,769milliontons.Calverd’sestimateistheonlyoriginalesti-mateof itstype,butbecauseitinvolvesonlyonevariable(thetotal mass of all livestock,as all but cold-blooded farmed fishexhaleroughlythesameamountof CO
2
perkilogram),allcal-culations of CO
2
from the respiration of a given weight of livestock would be about the same.Calverd’s estimate did not account for the fact that CO
2
fromlivestockrespirationisexcludedfromglobalGHGinven-tories. It also did not account for the GHGs newly attributedto livestock in our analysis.After adding all relevant GHGs toglobalGHGinventories,thepercentageof GHGsattributabletolivestockrespirationdropsfrom21percentto13.7percent.
Land.
Asthereisnowaglobalshortageof grassland,prac-tically the only way more livestock and feed can be produced
Cows respire on a cold morning at a cattle market in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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